Best FPGA Development Board for Multilevel Inverter PWM and Control Development

[magicsmoke]

I am attempted to help a student learn about PWM algorithm development and control for multilevel inverters.  The student is hoping to do this in an FPGA.  Does anyone have any recommendations for development boards that would be particularly suited to this task?  Is Altera preferred because of the software toolchain still?

[jeremy]

It seems like this is an awfully specific application, I do not know of any dev kits that are particularly suited to this task any more than others. If all you want is TTL or LVCMOS outputs to send to inverter circuitry, I'm sure any of the Digilent (Xilinx) or Terasic (Altera) boards would be fine. I personally prefer Xilinx because that is what I am used to, I don't Xilinx/Altera matters too much for relatively low speed stuff like what you are talking about.

Do you have much experience with FPGAs? Does the student? If not, and if you are attempting to do anything that is remotely maths heavy, it might be a good idea to use a Cortex-M4F or similar board instead of an FPGA. They are much simpler and quicker to work with without getting bogged down in the subtle nuances of programmable logic.